Biology alumni and faculty present at national conference

A team of alumni and faculty from Lewis & Clark will present their research at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) in August. Katherine Fiedler B.A. ’11, Logan Higgins B.A. ’11, Laura Bogar B.A. ’12, Assistant Professor of Biology Peter Kennedy, and Postdoctoral Researcher Jennifer Walker will present their posters and oral presentations throughout the weeklong meeting.

Following her graduation, Higgins presented her senior thesis at the American Society of Microbiology in New Orleans with help from a Council for Undergraduate Research grant. At the ESA meeting, Higgins will give a presentation about her current research surrounding continental distribution of plant-microbes, such as fungi and bacteria, in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

Fiedler will present her senior thesis at the meeting. Her research delves into arachnid community reassembly following the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. To complete her research, Fiedler collected more than 16,000 arachnid specimens.

Bogar will also present her senior thesis, which investigates the influence of host phylogeny on different fungal assemblages. Her research tracks the taxonomy of specific fungi.

Kennedy, whose research on fungi has earned him National Science Foundation grants and a prestigious Martin-Baker Award, will present on colonization and competition in fungal communities. His research is closely tied to that of postgraduate researcher Jennifer Walker. The two will present on their research surrounding mycorrhizae fungi.

Kennedy and his students aim to answer questions both basic and complex about fungi both regionally and beyond. In 2010, Kennedy’s Fulbright Fellowship took him to the forests of Mexico to research mycorrihizal symbiosis.